Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I am writing again today from my home in America. I was blessed to speak in my home church yesterday and we enjoyed God’s presence as the family of God. It is always good being with my local church family. I hope you were able to enjoy the same wherever you are. I am continuing to address the topic of mercy and grace. God’s mercy frees us from the bondage of the law and God’s grace liberates us by transforming our hearts and minds to manifest as God’s sons and daughters in our world.
The law of God was good because it revealed the character, nature, way, power, and authority of God. The law informed us of the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil. It revealed the perfect standard of God and that perfect standard exposed our own failures. The law exposed our sin, but the law could not transform the iniquities of our hearts. The Law could not change our internal weaknesses. The law lacked what only God’s grace can do in our lives.
Iniquities are a flaw, a propensity to transgress, a place in our hearts where we are vulnerable to the temptation to look for life in the wrong place. Iniquities are issues of the heart that need a visitation of God’s presence to transform the root character, nature, way, power, and authority of our family name. The root of sin is found in the iniquities of our hearts. Only God’s grace can transform the iniquities of our hearts. His grace is His manifest presence within us as the sevenfold Spirit of life. Holy Spirit is the internal Messenger of God that changes the message of our lives from within. God’s strength transforms our weaknesses to a testimony of His likeness from with. We can only be transformed by His presence within our hearts. The law could not transform our hearts. It could only reveal the failures of our ways.
Romans 7:13 Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
Law cannot save us from sin. The law manifested our need for God’s mercy and grace. The law exposed the desires of the flesh. The law only manifests sin. It is good in that it reveals our need for a new heart and a new mind. We need the heart of God within us, and we need the mind of Christ to become a testimony of life-giving change. Jesus was the end of the law for us so that He could also be the beginning of grace in our lives. Law revealed the weakness of our flesh. God’s grace brings the strength of God’s likeness and image to our inward man.
Romans 7:21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
The law only exposes the evil within me. Only grace can deliver us from our failures. Only the mind of Christ within us can transform our lives. Paul’s objective in this portion of his letter to the believers in Rome was to challenge them all to be people of grace. He was challenging them to let go of the old way of the knowledge of good and evil and be intimately joined to God in Christ to know the wonder working power of God’s powerful love within. This is the testimony of being married to grace. It is being intimately joined to God through the internal connection of Holy Spirit.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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